St. Cloud State Univeristy

Jul

26

2014

By alpha

Stadium Control Room, News Studio, and Student Broadcast Lab

Production Control Room

Audio Control Room

Broadcast Studio

Central Equipment Room

Big-time HD Video Upgrade

St. Cloud State University has over 16,000 students and is located in St. Cloud, MN. It has 19 Division II sport teams and its men’s and women’s hockey programs are Division I, but when it comes to broadcast technology, St. Cloud State is in a division of its own.

When Derrick Silvestri, TV Studio Manager at the University, decided to upgrade the broadcast systems to HD, he knew it was going to be a massive project. He wasn’t going to upgrade only one stadium control room, one news studio, or one student broadcast lab. He was going to upgrade everything at once.

Upgrade Challenges

Silvestri’s challenge began with providing HD broadcast capability for three separate sports venues: the Husky Stadium for football, the Halenbeck Hall for basketball, and the Herb Brooks National Hockey Center. Additional challenges included upgrading two separate news and sports broadcast studios, two video control rooms, a central equipment room, a media control room, a master control room, and installing a fiber cable network to connect all of it. The final challenge was to incorporate all of this technology into the Mass Communications Undergraduate program. A major objective for the upgrade was to provide real world experience with the latest technology so that students graduating from the program are qualified for positions in the broadcast industry.

We knew that we needed to upgrade our sports programs to stay competitive and we also had the opportunity to establish a 24x7 cable channel to broadcast our sporting events and college activities throughout the state of Minnesota. It was also essential for us to switch to a fiber network to connect the sports venues to the control rooms and broadcast studios located in a different building. After an intensive bidding and qualifications process, we selected Alpha Video & Audio as our design and integration company because we were confident they had the experience and expertise to get this job done on time.

Derrick Silvestri, TV Studio Manager, St. Cloud State University

Nothing But the Best

One of the major product requirements for the project was the need to support both Triax and fiber on the cameras since all the cameras would be used both in the studio and on location. The university ordered nine Grass Valley LDX cameras with 3G Triax to 3G Fiber Converters. Additional Grass Valley equipment included two Dyno Replay Systems and one Karrera Video Production Center.

The control room routing platform that was selected includes two Evertz 288x288 EQX Routers along with eight Evertz 7867VIP Multi-Image Display Processors. The audio control is provided by a Wheatstone system that includes one D-32 Audio Console and one Wheatstone D-8 Audio Console. Additional advanced components of the installation include a Chyron CAMIO Graphic Asset Management Server and one Editshare Xstream Workflow Director Server.

A Tightrope HD Video Server was installed to schedule content to four channels: the 24x7 sports channel, a campus bulletin board digital signage channel, a movie channel for the student dorm rooms, and the UTVS PEG station for the city and surrounding areas.

About

Alpha Video is a national integrator of audio, video, and broadcast technologies that empower organizations to better communicate with their target audience. We help our clients succeed by designing, installing, and supporting solutions that improve communications, collaboration, and content creation.

With our extensive expertise in a variety of industries, we are able to partner with our clients to overcome complex visual communications challenges.